Take Batman Begins, The Incredible Hulk, and Predators as a small example of films that have taken the reboot plunge, and have more or less fared rather well. Now even Superman and Spider-Man are getting reboots, hoping to revitalize each franchise.
But films that have been released could also use a reboot? Who could benefit commercially and/or critically from it? Here's a few that I think that could use a re-do.
Fantastic Four
This has already been announced being in the works shortly after the Marvel/Disney merger, but after the last two films, I think the dynamic quartet could use a second chance. The prior two films mainly focused on tongue-and-cheek gags and rather silly melodrama, straying somewhat very far from the spirit of the source material. Not to mention the film version Doctor Doom was a joke of a villain. And no, almost seeing Jessica Alba in the nude twice does not make up for it.
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Transformers
While both films made bank at theaters, both films were an utter disappointment. While the gags in the two Fantastic Four movies were cheesy as you can get, the Transformers movies took to a whole new low, and then some. But what can you expect from a director that apparently has little to no respect for an otherwise well-liked franchise? Explosions, sex jokes, racial stereotypes, shaking cameras, convoluted or dump plot devices, overdose of Bay's American patriotism, Megan Fox and Shia LeBouf's "acting" up the yin-yang, among other things. Granted, there are robots in both films. Awfully designed giant robots. Sigh...
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Eragon
When reading the first book of then-young Christopher Paolini fantasy epic, you can't help but feel that the world you are reading about is a fantastical one. While borrowing heavily from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, the books had their own majesty about it. So it's understandable how the very thought of a live motion picture being filmed by 20th Century Fox could make fans of the saga drool. Too bad the end result was, in order to best describe it, half-baked. Save for Jeremy Iron's performance of the Obi-Wan-ish character Brom, the rest of the film was a bland concoction of over-the-top corny acting, paper-thin dialogue, and a production value that would have a major TV show laugh at. It's probably no surprise why after the film was released that Fox has not even go as far as to announce any possibility of sequels to follow. Having read to a bit of the book myself, it comes across as a shame.
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This doesn't count movies like Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Resident Evil: Degeneration, which were made by their respective creators. Much like early comic book films, video game based movies have experienced a rocky transition. From the Super Mario Bros. movie to Alone in the Dark, from Street Fighter: The Movie to Doom, there seems to be little chance for such movies to achieve a critical high - the closest being the box-office bomb Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within with 48% on RottenTomatoes. But who's to blame for the poor adaptations? The producers? The writers? The directors? Not enough filmmakers who respect the source material, or in that fact, video games? Should filmmakers strive to make a great video game movie when many video game titles are arguably delivering epic stories that can make film plots blush? As long as there is a prospect for revenue, Hollywood is going adapt it into a film.Why not make one that was...I don't know...Really good! An actually, I thought Spirits Within was pretty good. Everything else? Meh.
may I argue that some movies shouldn't be made in the first place? (i.e. fantastic four and doom)
ReplyDeleteI mean there are things people are inspired to make in a certain medium that do well in that medium and when they do well people always want it to be translated into film where it may not actually be translatable. And then it gets made by people inspired only by dollar signs and it completely ruins the source material.
I like to let good books be good books and good video games not become bad movies.
but I'm the guy that thought it was impossible to make a good batman movie.
Valid point. The problem is that no medium is safe from getting adapted to another medium. Video games will spawn their own books. Books will spawn there own movies. Movies will spawn their own video games.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to say that these some films shouldn't be made in the first place, at the same time, there's plenty of comics/books/video games that I wish could be adapted into a movie - under the conditions that it is good. And so do others. Producers see this as a business avenue and try to cash on it. Why? It's easier to draw audiences to franchises they are familiar with instead of original movie ideas. If anything, both Hollywood and the audiences are to blame.